


You Hope It Don't Get Harmed

by Synekdokee



Category: Pacific Rim
Genre: Angst, Father-Son Relationship, M/M, Photographs, Post-Pitfall, Raleigh does his best to help, herc has problems with emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 09:22:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1739489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synekdokee/pseuds/Synekdokee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Pitfall, Herc is going through his son's possessions, deciding what should be kept. The photo album he finds makes everything a little harder - and maybe a little easier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Hope It Don't Get Harmed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nightbloomings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloomings/gifts).



> I dedicate this to Nib/Rahleighs. Because I can.

There are two boxes at Herc's feet. One filled with old papers, receipts and notes and scraps. The other has books and assorted knick knacks arranged into neat stacks. Herc is sitting on his son's bed, neatly made, unslept in for weeks. (Herc has spent countless nights listening to the silence, the lack of his son's steady breathing.) The footlocker is open and half empty. 

He's found a photo album. Worn and a little stained, and not exactly brimming with photos. But it was more than enough to shock Herc, that it even exists anymore. He remembers his wife crafting with it occasionally, attaching photos to the pages.

He's looking through the photos, slowly and meticulously, poring over each one with attention.

There are about twenty, almost all featuring Chuck. Birthdays, most of them. Christmases too, and a few other notable occasions. Herc trails his fingers over a photo of Chuck riding a bike for the first time, a huge grin on his face, dimples visible. 

Angela must've taken the shot - Herc remembers working that day. He'd gotten a photo on his phone from Angie, and hadn't been able to check his messages until much later.

There are a few of just Angela, always smiling, and Herc feels a pang of pain in his chest, both for himself and for Chuck. He's happy that Chuck found something to keep his mother near, regardless.

He realises with grief that there are no photos after Angela died. Herc hadn't often been around to take them. And in the end, there hadn't been many father-son events to record. Herc had never been good at those. There should've been, he knows. He should have created them. Chuck was only a child.

 

He's looking at a photo of Chuck on Christmas, the last one before Scissure, when there's a knock on the door. He clears his throat, suddenly aware of the tightness there, and tells the person to enter.

Becket opens the door carefully, as though worried about being too loud. He hesistates before stepping in, face settled so carefully that Herc wants to tell him he won't break from a smile.

"Becket," Herc greets him, nodding, and goes back to the photos. Raleigh shuffles a little, and comes to stand by the boxes.

"I just came to see if you needed help..." Raleigh says, voice uncertain.

Herc shakes his head. "Just sorting through Chuck's things," he says. "Can't keep putting it off." No matter how much he wants to hang on.

"They said you're moving to smaller quarters."

The "now that you won't be sharing with your son" is left unsaid, hanging awkwardly between them.

Herc grunts, because there isn't much to say to that, because it's true. 

Herc turns the page of the album and gets his breath knocked out of him. 

A photo of him, running around their green and overgrown backyard, shirtless and sunburned, Chuck riding on his shoulders and flailing his arms. Herc can almost hear the screams of delight. 

Herc's hands are holding Chuck steady by his legs. It's so easy to forget how small children were, once they've grown up.

His chest aches suddenly.

 

"I didn't know Chuck liked fiction," Raleigh says, and Herc looks up to see him holding one of Chuck's books, running his fingers over the worn covers. 

It's hard for a parent to let their child go. 

He gestures at the book. "I suppose they ought to be kept." Chuck had collected favourites, when he was younger. Herc never understood how someone could reread a book so many times.

Raleigh nods and gives him a slight smile. Then he spots the album in Herc's hands and steps closer, angling himself to see the photos.

Herc feels a strange compulsion to slam the album shut, but perhaps it's only fair to let Raleigh see them. 

Raleigh touches the edge of the album page softly with his fingertips, huffing out a laugh.

"Wow. He was-"

"Small," Herc says. Chuck had been - he'd had his growth spurt late, shortly before he applied to the Academy. Herc had half been hoping his son would never grow tall, to keep him out of jaegers. But by then the height limitations had been done away with anyway. 

They go through the remaining photos together in silence, and Herc fights against the welling tears. It feels stupid. There's no point in crying now. Things change.

The last photo is a blurry shot of Chuck running after a ball in a group of other blurry kids. Herc had taken it, and Angela had mocked him mercilessly for his inability to properly operate a camera.

"Are these all?" Raleigh asks when Herc finally closes the album and sets it aside for keeping. 

"There should be more," Herc says quietly. "There should be ten more years' worth of photos, but after Chuck's mother passed, we..." He sighs. 

"We were never good at that sort of stuff. I suppose I could've made more of an effort, but... Well. I was absent. In more ways than one."

"I'm sure Chuck understood that," Raleigh says, and Herc doesn't know whether to bless him or punch him for the sheer good-will he possesses.

Instead Herc stands up and moves to take an object at random from Chuck's footlocker. It's one of Max's toys, and Herc fiddles with it for a moment. Raleigh silently picks up another of Chuck's treasured books.

"We lost so much time," Herc says quietly, more to himself. "Things you can't get back."

Raleigh looks at him then, startled. 

"Sir... Are you alright?" He looks worried and apologetic, and Herc has a brief moment of wonder at how well the kid shakes the grief in his own life. 

Or maybe Herc has always been bad at accepting the inevitable.

Herc grunts and gives Raleigh a dismissive wave of his hand. 

"It's hard for a father to...," he hesiates, tries to find the right words.

"To let his son go."

The words feel strangely heavy. Dramatic. Herc folds one of Chuck's tee shirts and puts it on the clothing pile on the bed.

Raleigh huffs out a short laugh. 

"I'm sure you'll see him again," he says, and Herc knows he's being teased. He rolls his eyes at Raleigh, but feels his lips quirk into a smile.

"I am aware, Becket," he says, voice firm, but he smiles at Raleigh. "But it'll be a long while."

Raleigh stands up from the bed and scoops up the pile of clothes.

"I'll take these to med bay, let him pick which he wants to keep," he says. Herc nods and nudges the box with the books towards Raleigh.

"If you can carry it, take that too. There might be something he wants to take with him on the travels."

Raleigh nods. "And the album?"

Herc feels a light flush creep around his face. "I'd like to keep it. Three months is a long time not see my only child." He refuses to feel embarrassed.

Raleigh laughs. "Absolutely, sir." He puts the clothes on the cardboard box and hefts the whole pile up, tackling the door one-handed. 

"I'll tell Chuck you'll come down later," he says. "He keeps trying to bully the nurses into letting him out sooner."

Herc laughs, and promises to Raleigh to have words with Chuck. His son is slowly going stir crazy, confined in the medical bay, but has been even worse since Raleigh first proposed they should travel a little to put distance between them and what was not the end of the world after all.

\---

A month later, Chuck and Raleigh having departed a week earlier, Herc is already missing his son. It's only a light feeling of having misplaced something, a vague wrongness, but it nags at Herc's thoughts at random moments. After Chuck started piloting, he was rarely out of Herc's sight for more than a handful of days. After Pitfall, a matter of hours.

One morning a letter arrives, and the postage stamp is from Singapore. Intrigured, Herc tears open the envelope and pulls out a postcard and a photograph. It's an honest to god developed photo, glossy and printed on sturdy paper. Herc wonders where one might still have photos professionally developed.

In the photo Chuck is sitting on a bench in shorts and a tee, and he's holding a cluster of cherries in his hand. He's dappled by the sunlight filtering through leaves. His expression is a mix of amusement and embarrassment, posing for Raleigh's camera. Herc grins and studies the photo for several minutes, noting Chuck's lightly bandaged arm with approval, and empathising with the nose and cheeks shining sun-burn red.

Eventually he puts the photo down and picks up the card. It's short and rather generic, and obviously penned by Raleigh - Herc knows his son's handwriting is barely legible, much like Herc's.

" _Greetings from Singapore! Chuck refuses to wear sun block and eats his weight in fruit. He's also a sucker for stray kittens. Who'd have thought? Next stop is Japan, where we'll catch up with Mako._ " 

Raleigh's signature is tidy, Chuck's next to his a messy scrawl. There's an added message in the lower corner in Chuck's familiar chicken scratch. " _Look after Max,_ " topped with four exclamation points.

Herc smiles and moves the card and the photo to the side for now. Later, back in his quarters, he'll add them both to the photo album. Or maybe, he thinks, he'll start a new one.

**Author's Note:**

> "...and even if does you just do it all again."
> 
> Title from Regina Spektor's On The Radio.


End file.
